Scholars@Duke
Jeremy N. Kay

Jeremy N. Kay

Associate Professor of Neurobiology
Neurobiology
jeremy.kay@duke.edu
Box 3802, Duec, Durham, NC 27710
2351 Erwin Rd, Aeri 5004, Durham, NC 27705

Selected Publications

Neuroscience: The dynamic development of dendrites.

Journal Article Curr Biol · September 23, 2024 Protocadherins are cell-surface proteins that endow developing neurons with the ability to distinguish self-contacts from non-self. This recognition is critical for dendrite patterning and neuronal function. New research demonstrates the cellular basis for ... Full text Link to item Cite

Retinal neurons establish mosaic patterning by excluding homotypic somata from their dendritic territories.

Journal Article Cell Rep · August 27, 2024 In vertebrate retina, individual neurons of the same type are distributed regularly across the tissue in a pattern known as a mosaic. Establishment of mosaics during development requires cell-cell repulsion among homotypic neurons, but the mechanisms under ... Full text Link to item Cite

Generation of an Armcx1 Conditional Knockout Mouse.

Journal Article Genesis · August 2024 Armadillo repeat-containing X-linked protein-1 (Armcx1) is a poorly characterized transmembrane protein that regulates mitochondrial transport in neurons. Its overexpression has been shown to induce neurite outgrowth in embryonic neurons and to promote ret ... Full text Link to item Cite

Cellular and molecular alterations to muscles and neuromuscular synapses in a mouse model of MEGF10-related myopathy.

Journal Article Skelet Muscle · May 17, 2024 Loss-of-function mutations in MEGF10 lead to a rare and understudied neuromuscular disorder known as MEGF10-related myopathy. There are no treatments for the progressive respiratory distress, motor impairment, and structural abnormalities in muscles caused ... Full text Link to item Cite

Retinal neurons establish mosaic patterning by excluding homotypic somata from their dendritic territory.

Journal Article bioRxiv · November 18, 2023 In vertebrate retina, individual neurons of the same type are distributed regularly across the tissue in a pattern known as a mosaic. Establishment of mosaics during development requires cell-cell repulsion among homotypic neurons, but the mechanisms under ... Full text Link to item Cite

Rejection of inappropriate synaptic partners in mouse retina mediated by transcellular FLRT2-UNC5 signaling.

Journal Article Dev Cell · October 23, 2023 During nervous system development, neurons choose synaptic partners with remarkable specificity; however, the cell-cell recognition mechanisms governing rejection of inappropriate partners remain enigmatic. Here, we show that mouse retinal neurons avoid in ... Full text Link to item Cite

Adhesion GPCR Latrophilin 3 regulates synaptic function of cone photoreceptors in a trans-synaptic manner.

Journal Article Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A · November 9, 2021 Cone photoreceptors mediate daylight vision in vertebrates. Changes in neurotransmitter release at cone synapses encode visual information and is subject to precise control by negative feedback from enigmatic horizontal cells. However, the mechanisms that ... Full text Link to item Cite

Seeing stars: Development and function of retinal astrocytes.

Journal Article Dev Biol · October 2021 Throughout the central nervous system, astrocytes adopt precisely ordered spatial arrangements of their somata and arbors, which facilitate their many important functions. Astrocyte pattern formation is particularly important in the retina, where astrocyte ... Full text Link to item Cite

Environmental oxygen regulates astrocyte proliferation to guide angiogenesis during retinal development.

Journal Article Development · May 1, 2021 Angiogenesis in the developing mammalian retina requires patterning cues from astrocytes. Developmental disorders of retinal vasculature, such as retinopathy of prematurity (ROP), involve arrest or mispatterning of angiogenesis. Whether these vascular path ... Full text Link to item Cite

Comprehensive identification of mRNA isoforms reveals the diversity of neural cell-surface molecules with roles in retinal development and disease.

Journal Article Nat Commun · July 3, 2020 Genes encoding cell-surface proteins control nervous system development and are implicated in neurological disorders. These genes produce alternative mRNA isoforms which remain poorly characterized, impeding understanding of how disease-associated mutation ... Full text Link to item Cite

Optimizing Nervous System-Specific Gene Targeting with Cre Driver Lines: Prevalence of Germline Recombination and Influencing Factors.

Journal Article Neuron · April 8, 2020 The Cre-loxP system is invaluable for spatial and temporal control of gene knockout, knockin, and reporter expression in the mouse nervous system. However, we report varying probabilities of unexpected germline recombination in distinct Cre driver lines de ... Full text Link to item Cite

Binary Fate Choice between Closely Related Interneuronal Types Is Determined by a Fezf1-Dependent Postmitotic Transcriptional Switch.

Journal Article Neuron · February 5, 2020 Many neuronal types occur as pairs that are similar in most respects but differ in a key feature. In some pairs of retinal neurons, called paramorphic, one member responds to increases and the other to decreases in luminance (ON and OFF responses). Here, w ... Full text Link to item Cite

Large-scale death of retinal astrocytes during normal development is non-apoptotic and implemented by microglia.

Journal Article PLoS Biol · October 2019 Naturally occurring cell death is a fundamental developmental mechanism for regulating cell numbers and sculpting developing organs. This is particularly true in the nervous system, where large numbers of neurons and oligodendrocytes are eliminated via apo ... Full text Link to item Cite

Microglial Function Is Distinct in Different Anatomical Locations during Retinal Homeostasis and Degeneration.

Journal Article Immunity · March 19, 2019 Microglia from different nervous system regions are molecularly and anatomically distinct, but whether they also have different functions is unknown. We combined lineage tracing, single-cell transcriptomics, and electrophysiology of the mouse retina and sh ... Full text Link to item Cite

The Enigma of CRB1 and CRB1 Retinopathies.

Journal Article Adv Exp Med Biol · 2019 Mutations in the gene Crumbs homolog 1 (CRB1) are responsible for several retinopathies that are diverse in severity and phenotype. Thus, there is considerable incentive to determine how disruption of this gene causes disease. Progress on this front will a ... Full text Link to item Cite

Dendrite morphogenesis from birth to adulthood.

Journal Article Curr Opin Neurobiol · December 2018 Dendrites are the conduits for receiving (and in some cases transmitting) neural signals; their ability to do these jobs is a direct result of their morphology. Developmental patterning mechanisms are critical to ensuring concordance between dendritic form ... Full text Link to item Cite

Formation of retinal direction-selective circuitry initiated by starburst amacrine cell homotypic contact.

Journal Article Elife · April 3, 2018 A common strategy by which developing neurons locate their synaptic partners is through projections to circuit-specific neuropil sublayers. Once established, sublayers serve as a substrate for selective synapse formation, but how sublayers arise during neu ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Formation of retinal direction-selective circuitry initiated by starburst amacrine cell homotypic contact

Other · December 18, 2017 Impact statement Selective synapse formation in a retinal motion-sensitive circuit is orchestrated by starburst amacrine cells, which use homotypic interactions to initiate formation of a dendritic scaffold that recruits projections from circuit partners. ... Full text Cite

Astrocytes follow ganglion cell axons to establish an angiogenic template during retinal development.

Journal Article Glia · October 2017 Immature astrocytes and blood vessels enter the developing mammalian retina at the optic nerve head and migrate peripherally to colonize the entire retinal nerve fiber layer (RNFL). Retinal vascularization is arrested in retinopathy of prematurity (ROP), a ... Full text Link to item Cite

Anatomy and spatial organization of Müller glia in mouse retina.

Journal Article J Comp Neurol · June 1, 2017 Müller glia, the most abundant glia of vertebrate retina, have an elaborate morphology characterized by a vertical stalk that spans the retina and branches in each retinal layer. Müller glia play diverse, critical roles in retinal homeostasis, which are pr ... Full text Link to item Cite

Radial migration: Retinal neurons hold on for the ride.

Journal Article J Cell Biol · October 24, 2016 Newborn neuron radial migration is a key force shaping the nervous system. In this issue, Icha et al. (2016. J. Cell Biol. http://dx.doi.org/10.1083/jcb.201604095) use zebrafish retinal ganglion cells as a model to investigate the cell biological basis of ... Full text Link to item Cite

Somatodendritic Expression of JAM2 Inhibits Oligodendrocyte Myelination.

Journal Article Neuron · August 17, 2016 Myelination occurs selectively around neuronal axons to increase the efficiency and velocity of action potentials. While oligodendrocytes are capable of myelinating permissive structures in the absence of molecular cues, structurally permissive neuronal so ... Full text Link to item Cite

An extracellular biochemical screen reveals that FLRTs and Unc5s mediate neuronal subtype recognition in the retina.

Journal Article Elife · December 2, 2015 In the inner plexiform layer (IPL) of the mouse retina, ~70 neuronal subtypes organize their neurites into an intricate laminar structure that underlies visual processing. To find recognition proteins involved in lamination, we utilized microarray data fro ... Full text Link to item Cite

Starburst amacrine cells orchestrate assembly of retinal direction-selective circuitry

Conference INVESTIGATIVE OPHTHALMOLOGY & VISUAL SCIENCE · June 1, 2015 Link to item Cite

Following directions from the retina to the brain.

Other Neuron · May 20, 2015 Different types of retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) project to distinct brain targets. In this issue of Neuron, Osterhout et al. (2015) and Sun et al. (2015) identify how direction-selective RGC axons match with their targets and the consequences for visual f ... Full text Link to item Cite

Development of dendritic form and function.

Journal Article Annu Rev Cell Dev Biol · 2015 The nervous system is populated by numerous types of neurons, each bearing a dendritic arbor with a characteristic morphology. These type-specific features influence many aspects of a neuron's function, including the number and identity of presynaptic inpu ... Full text Link to item Cite

Sox2 regulates cholinergic amacrine cell positioning and dendritic stratification in the retina.

Journal Article J Neurosci · July 23, 2014 The retina contains two populations of cholinergic amacrine cells, one positioned in the ganglion cell layer (GCL) and the other in the inner nuclear layer (INL), that together comprise ∼1/2 of a percent of all retinal neurons. The present study examined t ... Full text Link to item Cite

A role for TREK1 in generating the slow afterhyperpolarization in developing starburst amacrine cells.

Journal Article J Neurophysiol · May 2013 Slow afterhyperpolarizations (sAHPs) play an important role in establishing the firing pattern of neurons that in turn influence network activity. sAHPs are mediated by calcium-activated potassium channels. However, the molecular identity of these channels ... Full text Link to item Cite

MEGF10 and MEGF11 mediate homotypic interactions required for mosaic spacing of retinal neurons.

Journal Article Nature · March 11, 2012 In many parts of the nervous system, neuronal somata display orderly spatial arrangements. In the retina, neurons of numerous individual subtypes form regular arrays called mosaics: they are less likely to be near neighbours of the same subtype than would ... Full text Link to item Cite

Neurod6 expression defines new retinal amacrine cell subtypes and regulates their fate.

Journal Article Nat Neurosci · July 10, 2011 Most regions of the CNS contain many subtypes of inhibitory interneurons with specialized roles in circuit function. In the mammalian retina, the ∼30 subtypes of inhibitory interneurons called amacrine cells (ACs) are generally divided into two groups: wid ... Full text Link to item Cite

Retinal ganglion cells with distinct directional preferences differ in molecular identity, structure, and central projections.

Journal Article J Neurosci · May 25, 2011 The retina contains ganglion cells (RGCs) that respond selectively to objects moving in particular directions. Individual members of a group of ON-OFF direction-selective RGCs (ooDSGCs) detect stimuli moving in one of four directions: ventral, dorsal, nasa ... Full text Link to item Cite

Birthdays of retinal amacrine cell subtypes are systematically related to their molecular identity and soma position.

Journal Article J Comp Neurol · December 10, 2009 The mammalian retina contains six major cell types, several of which are divided into multiple molecularly and morphologically distinct subtypes. To understand how subtype diversity arises during development, we focused on amacrine interneurons in the mous ... Full text Link to item Cite

Staggered cell-intrinsic timing of ath5 expression underlies the wave of ganglion cell neurogenesis in the zebrafish retina.

Journal Article Development · June 2005 In the developing nervous system, progenitor cells must decide when to withdraw from the cell cycle and commence differentiation. There is considerable debate whether cell-extrinsic or cell-intrinsic factors are most important for triggering this switch. I ... Full text Link to item Cite

Forward genetic analysis of visual behavior in zebrafish

Journal Article PLoS Genetics · January 1, 2005 The visual system couverts the distribution and wavelengths of photons entering the eye into patterns of neuronal activity, which then drive motor and ersdocdrse behavioral responses. The gene products important for vîsuai processing by a living and behavi ... Full text Cite

Out-foxing fate; molecular switches create neuronal diversity in the retina.

Other Neuron · September 16, 2004 Progenitor cells in the mammalian retina generate at least 55 distinct kinds of neurons. Two reports in this issue of Neuron reveal two transcription factors (Foxn4 and Bhlhb4) that contribute to the development of this remarkable cellular diversity. ... Full text Link to item Cite

Transient requirement for ganglion cells during assembly of retinal synaptic layers.

Journal Article Development · March 2004 The inner plexiform layer (IPL) of the vertebrate retina comprises functionally specialized sublaminae, representing connections between bipolar, amacrine and ganglion cells with distinct visual functions. Developmental mechanisms that target neurites to t ... Full text Link to item Cite

Retinal ganglion cell genesis requires lakritz, a Zebrafish atonal Homolog.

Journal Article Neuron · June 2001 Mutation of the zebrafish lakritz (lak) locus completely eliminates the earliest-born retinal cells, the ganglion cells (RGCs). Instead, excess amacrine, bipolar, and Müller glial cells are generated in the mutant. The extra amacrines are found at ectopic ... Full text Link to item Cite

Differential response of ventral midbrain and striatal progenitor cells to lesions of the nigrostriatal dopaminergic projection.

Journal Article Dev Neurosci · 2000 In response to injury, progenitor cells in the adult brain can proliferate and generate new neurons and/or glia, which may then participate in injury-induced compensatory processes. In this study, we explore the ability of young adult mice to generate new ... Full text Link to item Cite

Trophic effects of androgen: development and hormonal regulation of neuron number in a sexually dimorphic vocal motor nucleus.

Journal Article J Neurobiol · September 5, 1999 In Xenopus laevis, the laryngeal motor nucleus (n. of cranial nerves IX-X) is part of a sexually differentiated, androgen sensitive neuromuscular system devoted to vocalization. Adult males have more n. IX-X neurons than females; however, during developmen ... Link to item Cite